It’s better to be feared than
loved, apparently. This Machiavellian belief is very evident in schools today, where
senior managers deliberately create cultures of fear amongst their staff.

Personally, I think there is a
difference between being feared and creating fear. The former is encouraging
proper respect in your employees, so that your presence creates a desire to
work hard whether they believe in the work or not, they will at least want to
please you. This is a good leader.

The latter is creating a
permanent atmosphere of fear in employees, that is there whether you are or
not. Staff think that any one tiny infringement against the establishment will
definitely result in ‘terrible things’ happening. They may or may not work
hard, but they will certainly work cautiously and on egg shells, yet at the
same time know absolutely that it is only a matter of time before their human
nature causes them to make a mistake, and that will be the end of them. This is
a bad leader.

I think the second description is
most prevalent in schools today because the response to raising standards has
always been to raise pressure, not to improve conditions. Passing this pressure
down the hill has been allowed to evolve unchecked, so that adding more fear is
both allowed and encouraged.

Finding another way of operating
would, in this environment of institutional bullying, be seen to be weak, and
no one is willing to be the trail blazer and stick their neck out to change it.
Running a school is a job for conformists.

Managers want teachers to be
afraid of losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their reputations and their
entire careers. All are within the control of internal SMTs and the destruction
of them requires no input from external ombudsman, leaving teachers with little
protection against managers who want to destroy them in this way. Excessive
fear, even if nothing happens, contributes significantly to mental health
issues.

Heads have, over the years, campaigned
and won the right to this exclusive control over their staff in order to
maintain the culture of fear properly. SMT now create this fear by spying,
manufacturing evidence and using unofficial references, meaning that even
teachers who have done nothing wrong should still be afraid.

Businesses know well enough that
creating such an atmosphere would result in staff leaving for a better deal. I
hope that the increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession, and the
difficulty that even politicians acknowledge there is in recruiting good staff,
will result in a major shift that allows teachers to work without fear.

Are you teaching in fear? Have
you been a victim of bullying and felt that you have been used as an example to
invoke fear in other teachers? Please feel free to comment below.